50 sion that he has nothing much to do with the action of the pitch or its results. "I've always felt that when I throw it something wonderful is going to happen-something good for us," he said to me once. On another day, he suddenly asked, "Have I ever told you about my agreement with the ball?" I said no, and he said, "Well, our deal is that I'm not going to throw you very hard as long as you promise to move around when you get near the plate, because I want you back. So if you do your part we'll get to play some more." He watched my reaction to this with considerable relish, and then elaborated in less Oz-like fashion. "I've got good control and some movement, but there are guys around with better sinkers than mine. Greg Minton is one. Jim Acker, who's with Toronto. Bob Stanley. Mine is gener- ally around the plate and low. You can't start it out at the batter's knees, because if you do it's a ball. If you want it inside on a right-hander, you kind of throw it over the middle a little and let It run in-hopefully down and in. If it's going to be outside to a left-hander, you're throwing it to the outer half-the outer half of the plate to him, that is-and it's supposed to go down and away. If you want it inside to him, you throw it off the plate, and it's meant to run back over. But of course if the ball doesn't do its job, if it starts dancing allover the place-well, then it's going to get hurt." Even when it is doing its job, the Quisenberry sinker is apt to have ad- ventures. He gives up something on the order of one hit per inning, and a lot of his outs come on hard-hit balls that seem to be hit right at one of his infielders. "Magical things keep hap- pening behind me," Quis often says, and he points out that the Kansas City second baseman, Frank White, has ex- traordinary range and hands, and that White's two partners at shortstop in recent years-first U. L. Washington and now Onix Concepcion-are scarcely less talented. The Infield at Royals Stadium is AstroTurf, which should be a considerable handicap for a man who throws so many ground balls, but his defense makes up for that, it seems. George Brett, the Royals third baseman, told me that when the team won a pennant in 1980 Quisenberry's infielders ragged him with references to his "30-30-30 Club" -thirty saves, thirty strikeouts, and thirty great plays made behind him. "He's a comfortable guy to bat against," Brett said. "Guys go up there looking to hit the ball. He's like Scott McGregor, of the Orioles. You feel good batting against him, every time, and at the end of the game you realize you've gone oh-for-four-a c om/ortable oh -for-four." Quisenberry, in any case, has some other pitches, and he has worked in- cessantly to widen his repertoire. It took him until 1982 to develop an effective breaking ball, and last year he came up with a change-up that he at last felt confident about. He tinkered with a forkbal1 for a time but had to junk it. When the Royals made a barnstorming visit to Japan at the end of the 1981 season, Quisenberry mas- tered the knuckleball-a nasty shock for American League batters the fol- lowing summer. But the knuckler doesn't quite work for him anymore, for some reason. "If the knuckleball was my wife, I'd divorce her," Quis said. "She's not consistent, she's not reliable-l just can't depend on her at all. I can throw it great in warmups or playing catch, but in a game now I just use it to show the batters that it's there. If it's done right, it's the most fun pitch to throw in the world. The good knuckleball pitchers throw it just about all the time. With them, it's a stronger relationship. I think I'm just about out of new pitches. I can work on locations and different speeds, but there isn't much more I can think of. I wish I could throw the overhand curveball. Wouldn't that be a sur- prise! " Back at Terry Park, Quisenberry had told me about his conversion into a submariner, which came about on that very field in the spring of 1980. He had been called up from Omaha in the middle of the previous season, at a time when the Royals were desperate for any kind of a middle-innings relief man who could get people out; he was far from their first choice for the job, but he stuck on, and even accounted for five saves; mostly, he was the set- up man for Al Hrabosky, who was then the club's short-relief honcho. e:: N5T Quisenberry was a standup sidearm pitcher then, with virtually no break- ing ball. Jim Frey succeeded Whitey Herzog as the Kansas City skipper the next spring, and early in the training schedule Quisenberry had a very bad outing against the Pirates. After the game, Frey asked him to throw for him on the sidelines, to see what he had. After about fifteen pitches, Frey began saying things like "Are you throwing as hard as you can?" and "Is that the way you throw your breaking ball?" and Quis concluded that there might be a quick turnaround just ahead in his career. A day or two later, Frey told him that he'd set up a sidelines appointment for him with Kent Tekulve, the great Pittsburgh submariner, when the Pirates next came down from Bradenton to play. "I thought he was just going to give me a few pointers," Quisenberry said, "but when the day came Jim said to T ekulve, 'We want this guy to be like you. He throws a little like you al- ready, but basically he doesn't have shit.' So it was a total makeover. Tekulve showed me there were three basics to the motion, which were: sit on your back leg, bend at the waist, and, most important, extend the left leg-my front leg-way beyond the normal point out ahead. He told me to open up about six or eight inches be- yond what's normal, coming right at the plate with the leg, and not to put that foot out heel-down at first, which is your natural instinct. This opens your body up a whole lot more, and it lets you stay low and keeps your arm low. If I don't get way out there and do that, I land here" -Quis was on his feet now-"with this front leg locked, and I start and end standing up, throwing the old sidearm way. I've always got to fight that. It's a battle for me, in spring training and all through the season, because when the bal1 comes up, the way it wants to, I've got nothing. Staying down like that is a strange feeling when you first try it, because you're totally off balance and you keep thinking you're going to fall over sideways. If I don't make this little hop at the end of the motion, I do fall over. "Well, I didn't like this at all. Frey and a lot of our coaches were watch- ing, and I was throwing allover the place and bouncing the ball before it got to the plate. Teke kept saying, 'Hey, that's a good pitch, that's the way to throw,' and I'm thinkin', I have no idea what I'm doing. But Jim liked it, and two days later he put me